Certain types of walls, such as refrigerator walls, are assembled from insulated slab panels, which are factory molded from insulating materials such as urethane. Mounted within these panels are fastening housings for holding adjacent slabs in abutting positions as they are assembled. The fastening housings contain opposed locking devices. Usually the housings are mounted along the panel edges during the factory molding process, and thus the housings must adhere to the molding material in order to provide a secure interlocking of the panels.
One obstacle in the manufacture of refrigeration wall systems has been poor adherence of the metal fastener housings to typical insulating material such as urethane foam. In the past, this problem has been addressed by spraying the fastener housings with an adhesive before beginning the molding process in order to enhance the adherence of the fastener in the foam insulating material. This method did increase the pull strength of the foamed-in-place fastener, but proved to be labor intensive and costly. An alternative method was to apply the adhesive during the manufacture of the fasteners, but the adhesive tended to obstruct the equipment used to assemble the fasteners. Therefore, there continues to be a need for a fastener that will strongly adhere to the insulating foam in a refrigerator wall system while being easily produced and attached to the panels.